Talking point. According to Microsoft, Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE will end their Extended Support Phase later this month. This means they'll become officially obsolete and will no longer be supported by Microsoft. Apart from the chance to dance on the grave of another Microsoft OS, what's the relevance of this for The Icon Bar?

Consider the age of RISC OS 4. Clan members first saw it running at the Wakefield show in 1998 which makes it a similar vintage to Windows 98. (RISC OS 4 was eventually released by RISCOS Ltd for existing Acorn machines within a year.)

As time passes, Microsoft release Windows 2000 and XP, and we see several incarnations of RISC OS Select and the 32-bit RISC OS 5. So, with the forthcoming Select ROM release, and with the softloading arguments nullified for emulator machines, is it time to "do a Microsoft" and move on from a five year old OS?

I think the point is that RISC OS 4 is old by the standards of the outside world, and we should have something to move on to by now. RISC OS 5 isn't suitable for anything other than a small range of computers.

OK, so there's a counter argument that we should also have moved on from using 200MHz or less RiscPCs by now as well, but this is a talking point! ;)

Message #92676, posted by john at 11:45, 5/1/2004, in reply to message #92675

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Posts: 261

We shouldn't just move on for the sake of it! I'm sure we don't want to mave a short obsolescence time, I expect anything written now should work on RO4, and probably RO3.5 onwards much of the time. Windows has changed a lot from Win9x to NT type version.

If more people upgraded then there would be more progress to the OS because more programmer time would be afforded. I don't care if you smugly don't like the short obsolescence time, OS developers don't generally work for free.

Simply put, if you're not running the latest version of the OS (Select or ROS5 depending on your hardware), you might as well not use RISC OS at all because you're contributing this much to the platform:

Message #92680, posted by fwibbler at 13:39, 5/1/2004, in reply to message #92679

Posts: 318

I more or less agree with Chris.I believe that software written should work on OS's as far back as 4 but no further. If they happen to work on OS3 then fine, if not, tough.

It's up to the individual if they wish to run OS3 but I don't think that programmers should feel any obligation to make their software work on it.

I suspect that one of the reasons that so much recent software does still work on OS3 is that the market is so small that programmers have to try and cater for the largest possible audience.

I don't think ROL could possibly drop support for OS4 for sometime since they're still selling it!Even once they move over to 4.37 on ROM (or whatever version it will be (4.4 I think)) it would be reasonable to expect support for a year afterwards on OS4.Cheers!

Yeah everyone should upgrade to the latest version... where can we get figures on how many people run which version of RISC OS? Maybe everyone has who's still active users. Can't wait for select on ROM though, faster bootups all round! :)

Message #92682, posted by martin at 16:23, 5/1/2004, in reply to message #92681

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Posts: 17

I'm all for moving on, but why is RISC OS 4 still so expensive ? I upgraded a dozen or so machines to RISC OS 3 when it cost around £25 a time, but the.. (pause to look it up) ...£85 price tag means that my classroom's 8 RiscPCs are staying RISC OS 3.5/3.6/3.7. For goodness sakes, even the £85 dosen't get the latest version....

Why would I buy RISC OS 4+Select, when it costs 230 pounds, and would require me to spend several hours sorting out my computer just to make it work as well as it did with RISC OS 3.7?

I would need to replace !Boot and then reinstate everything which was configured in my old !Boot, and back up and reformat the hard disk and remove !LongFiles. Then I (probably) need to patch some of my software which will stop working.

For many people, it is not worth the time and money to upgrade a perfectly functional computer which is worth two hundred quid at most.

Take NetSurf as an example. It would have been very easy to use the ImageFileRender module, found in Select, to render images in various formats found on web pages. In fact Justin Fletcher implemented a rough and ready implementation of this almost overnight - compare this to the development time in porting open source image libraries, the extra consumption of system resources, and so on. The time saved could have been spent improving CSS support or adding new GUI features.

Select has many benefits for users and programmers (the programmer benefits would benefit users too if the user base was large enough to make development worthwhile). You might think RISC OS 3.7 is good enough for your needs, but you can't make progress by standing still.

Yes, 230UKP is a lot - that's one argument for leaving RISC OS 4 behind. You shouldn't have to upgrade twice to get into a position to use Select, and the ROM release should solve this. It depends on the pricing strategy, of course.

What would be nice is if all new computers shipped with Select by default. I'm including the Iyonix in that statement.

Message #92687, posted by ad at 19:34, 5/1/2004, in reply to message #92686

Posts: 3229

People buying lower RISC OS's are still contributing to the platform (although not as much)

e.gI just sold some RISC OS 3.7 ROMs for GBP16.50 inc P&P, and I will now probably upgrade part of my computer i.e VRAM using that money (and some other money.). If I hadn't sold RO3.7 I wouldn't have planned to upgrade the VRAM.

Message #92689, posted by mavhc at 23:03, 5/1/2004, in reply to message #92688

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Posts: 660

> Simply put, if you're not running the latest version of the OS (Select or ROS5 depending on your hardware), you might as well not use RISC OS at all because you're contributing this much to the platform:

> Nothing.

Unless you're buying hardware and software that isn't Iyonix/Select. Or writing code, or helping in all those non programy ways people keep talking about.

It's high time RISC OS Ltd and Castle both stopped being so petty and childish, resolved their differences and produced a unified RO 5.1 or whatever. Doesn't hugely matter if it's 1 version for 26-bit & 32-bit hardware or 2 variants, but the lack of unity is crippling the already nearly-dead Acorn world.

Given ROL's failure to produce a 32-bit version or an Acorn-chipset-independent version, I think the simplest option might be for ROL to go into liquidation and Castle to acquire the rights to Select to integrate into RO5, making it an even more compelling upgrade for RISC PC owners. ROL has been failing to deliver anything other than incremental improvements for years now. Castle is at least showing some initiative.

I'm currently looking into upgrading a RO3.7 StrongARM RPC. However, I would love to have the features of Select, but £230 is absolutely rediculous. I also am torn whether to buy RO4, because ROL could release Risc OS 4.4 any minute. If you buy RO4 now you can be certain it isn't the latest and best version of the OS.